Bridgebio Pharma Inc. is going back to the Bristol Myers Squibb Co. (BMS) well to restore its stalled momentum as the two companies have supercharged their July 2021 collaboration to develop an SHP2 inhibitor. Bridgebio could receive up to $905 million, including an up-front payment of $90 million plus $815 million in milestone and royalty payments, expected to be in the low- to midteens, in its new BMS collaboration to develop and commercialize BBP-398 in oncology. Read More
Cullinan Oncology Inc.’s lead program deal with Otsuka Holdings Co. Ltd. subsidiary Taiho Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. brings $275 million up front and the potential for as much as $130 million in regulatory milestone payments. Read More
Bristol Myers Squibb Co. has announced long-term data from its closely watched psoriasis pill, deucravacitinib, which it hopes will supplant Amgen Inc.’s blockbuster, Otezla (apremilast), as the main oral therapy for the disease. Read More
Bone Therapeutics SA has entered an exclusive three-month discussion period with Medsenic SAS, which could culminate in a reverse merger. The potential transaction represents a lifeline for the troubled Belgian cell therapy developer, which is running out of cash and which has been more or less abandoned by its shareholders. Read More
Orion Corp. has secured exclusive global rights, outside China, to a non-opioid pain drug candidate from Jiangxi Jemincare Group Co. Ltd. The deal, for oral sodium channel inhibitor JMKX-000623, brought Jemincare €15 million (US$15.6 million) up front. In addition, Orion could pay the Chinese company development, commercialization, and sales milestones that Orion suggested could be “significant,” as well as tiered royalties of 8% to 15% based on future sales. Read More
The commercial success of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has other companies in the space “looking in the attic, so to speak,” to see if they have any patents they can assert against components of the vaccines so they can get a percentage of the sales, Aziz Burgy, a patent attorney, told BioWorld. Given the global spread of the pandemic and how quickly it came on, the vaccines have generated billions of dollars in sales in a short period of time, and other companies want a share, he said. He compared today’s patent infringement cases against the vaccine producers to the litigation seen in the early days of the smartphone revolution when other high-tech companies scrambled for a piece of Apple’s and Samsung’s profits. Read More
As the COVID-19 pandemic slowly starts to ease globally, efforts are already gearing up to predict the next potential pandemic. One institute researching the increasing number of diseases transmitted from animals to humans is Canada’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, part of the University of Saskatchewan. Now, together with collaborators including the Canadian government, it’s sponsoring a phase II trial of COVAC-2, a squalene-in-water adjuvanted microsphere peptide-based protein subunit vaccine that contains a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Read More
In an effort to increase global access to COVID-19 technologies, the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool and the Medicines Patent Pool finalized a licensing agreement May 12 with the U.S. NIH for research tools, early stage vaccines and diagnostics. Read More
“People often think about the genome as the blueprint of the organism, but that’s not really correct,” Steven Quake told reporters at a Science press briefing earlier this week. “The genome is more of a parts list, because every cell type uses different parts.” Quake is president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, and professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Stanford University. Read More
Clinical updates, including trial initiations, enrollment status and data readouts and publications: Abbvie, Arcellx, Cognition, Genentech, Glyscend, Inovio, Medicenna, Mind, Myeloid, Rhovac, Sanofi, Scilex, Spine. Read More
Biopharma happenings, including deals and partnerships, grants, preclinical data and other news in brief: CSL, Enveric, Gain, Juvenescence, Neximmune, Propanc, Rakovina, Selah, Sound, Vifor, Zealand. Read More
Regulatory snapshots, including global drug submissions and approvals, clinical trial approvals and other regulatory decisions and designations: Amicus, Ascletis, Cue, Eli Lilly, Immuron, Incyte, Iterum, Kiromic, Regulus, Spine, Veru. Read More
